


Negotiations, or How Laurent Learned to Wrestle

by covertius



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Captive Prince Month, Gen, Healing, M/M, Necessary Conversations, Post-Kings Rising, capri month prompt: forgiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-09 01:46:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14706779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/covertius/pseuds/covertius
Summary: For Captive Prince Month 2018 prompt, ForgivenessSet between Kings Rising and the Summer PalaceDamen's healing and the joining of two kingdoms is progressing as well as he could hope.  But in order for the court around him to be at peace the way he would like, the two most important people in his life must learn to get along.Which means that Nikandros also must find a way to forgive Laurent for what he did to Damen.ETA:  Final scene (between Laurent and Nikandros) is now rewritten after posting.





	Negotiations, or How Laurent Learned to Wrestle

"You could stop pushing him," Damen said.

"But why would I want to do that?"

"He is one of our greatest supporters and most important kyroi. He has information about the Akielon population of Delpha -" "Delfeur" "-that could be invaluable if he were disposed to offer it unprompted. And he's not going anywhere. He will be here for all the important events of our reign - surely even you must eventually tire of picking fights with someone who cannot fight back."

"Compelling,” Laurent said, in a dry voice that indicated that it very much was not, “But I failed to hear a reason why disliking me should become comfortable for him.”

"You are the one who goes out of your way to ensure his dislike continues! Bestir yourself in the other direction. I would appreciate it if you two could be in the same room so I do not have to parcel my time between my lover and my dearest friend, or constantly be at odds with one of you for taking the other's side in a conflict that need not have happened. Please.  For me." He gripped the still-healing wound in his side and tried to look as pathetic as possible. Laurent threw a pillow at him.

"He is not such a stuffed-shirt as he seems when he is trying to save me from the schemes of Veretian snakes. You would enjoy his friendship, if you had it."

"There's no point trying to win him over while he's still swallowing in resentment half the things he's thought about me. Talk it out with him, let him have his full say, and I'll consider it."

That was, very carefully, not a promise - but Damen felt confident of carrying his way.

* * *

 "Hold!" Nikandros shouted.

"No, I'm good," Damen said, "Another round."  It was the first time he'd been allowed down to the practice ring since Kastor stabbed him.  The training grounds had been cleared so no one would see how awkwardly he moved now, mere days since being allowed even out of bed, and he and Nikandros had been going through the easiest forms like green boys, slowly and measuredly knocking the lightest of the wooden blades against each other in a fixed pattern that allowed for no creativity or physical strain.  It was frustrating in the extreme, but still the most alive Damen had felt in weeks and he doesn't want it to end, even if he was starting to lag and he become a little more aware of the wound in his side.

"We're later than we promised the doctors already.  We should get you back to bed."

"Your King wishes to continue the match."

"My King is panting like a dog in the sun."  Nikandros lowered his sword pointedly, and Damen knew he would not raise it again, not if Damen gave him a direct order, not even if Damen swung at him with his own sword and struck him unresisting.  For a moment, he thought about walloping him (the light balsam would do no serious harm) but the thought gave him no satisfaction, and he dismissed it.  This was why, when Laurent had unexpectedly lent his support to Damen ignoring Paschal's advice, his only stipulation had been that Damen was only allowed to spar with Nikandros.  Now Damen regretted not finding a way to sneak around and draw in someone like Pallas or Atkis, more loyal to the crown than to him personally, whom he could overwhelm with orders.

"I'm fine," Damen repeated, "One more."

Nikandros looked at him consideringly.  "Hold your breath."

"What?"

"You're breathing heavily," Nikandros said, "Like you're exhausted, but if you can hold your breath while I count to thirty, then I'll know that you are just overheated, and we can continue the match."

Feeling more than a little ridiculous, Damen drew in a breath and held it, but he barely got to ten before Nikandros poked him, hard, in his uninjured side with the point of the wooden sword.

 All the air was expelled from him.  "Cheating!" Damen gasped out, as he tried to get it back.

"Yes, it was.  But you should have been able to block that, even in this state.  You are too tired to continue."

Defeated, Damen surrendered his sword.  "When I am hale again, you will be bragging the rest of your life that you once landed a hit on King Damianos."

"Yes, Exalted."  Nikandros put both their swords away, then clapped him on the shoulder.  "Same again tomorrow?"

"Yes," said Damen, swinging his arm around Nikandros's shoulders for commeradery, and also for the support.  Now that they'd stopped, he could feel how much even that rudimentary sparring took out of him.  As they walked off the sawdust, linked, Damen felt his mouth curling into a grin.  Between the desperation of taking back the country and healing from his wounds, he had not been able to joke around with his friend since before Kastor's coup, when everything changed.

"That was almost underhanded, that last bit," Damen said, easily, "You almost remind me of my Veretian snake."

Under his arm, he felt Nikandros go stiff.  Damen turned to look.  His face had shuttered.

"That was not an insult, old friend," he said - it was not even true, entirely; Laurent would have aimed for the injury and decreed that it served Damen right if he tore stitches - but Nikandros looked no happier.  Damen sighed and unslung his arm from around Nikandros's shoulders.  If they were going to do this now, he needed to be sitting down - something else he hated about the slow time, while he heals - and he made his way to one of the benches that ring the practice arena, motioning that Nikandros had permission to sit as well.

"Laurent thinks that if things are going to get any better with - you accepting his place in my life, you need to speak your mind about him first."

"If we are giving you advice about what the other should do, it might go better if the Prince of Vere would cease provoking me at every turn."

"I've asked him."  Whether it would do any good was another question; Laurent often did not do what Damen asked, sometimes intentionally just to be contrary.  "Now I am asking you.  He is not here to be insulted.  We are not in public, where I would be compelled to defend him.  Just this once, you have my leave to speak out against the Prince of Vere, who is our ally and our choice, and my own foolishness in choosing him.  For just this time, I will not call it treason.  Go on, tell your King he is an idiot to his face."

"I do not think you are a fool.  I was at your sickbed while he watched over you, while he rooted out Kastor's supporters and ran both kingdoms without leaving your side, gripping your hand like he could keep you in this world somehow by refusing to let go.  I can see, more than I once did, why you think well of him, what you've seen in him that makes you find him worthy of your love and trust."  Nikandros spoke slowly.  "But I have also seen the scars on your back, and I can tell, from the way you act with him, from the way you act with others, that there are worse things that happened that I don't know about, things that you do not speak of."

Inside him, Damen felt something shudder, as if it would crack; he had to fight not to turn his face away.

"I am not asking," Nikandros said quickly, "I - If you ever need to speak of it, I will hear, but if you consider it your burden to bear, then I never need to know.  But the man who did that to you is no good man, and that is also who he is."

"I killed his brother."

"And I thought Kastor had killed you!  But if I'd had him in my power, I would have killed him cleanly, not tortured him for weeks delighting in his pain.  I am not happy that good and well-being of my country now depend on whether such a man loves you enough from moment to moment to overcome his crueler impulses.  But even more, as your friend, I worry about what he could do to you."

"And what is that?  Have his guards tie me to a post and whip me again if I displease him?"

"I know he doesn't have the power that he had over you in Vere, but he is still a master manipulator and a shrewd schemer.  You cannot tell me that he could not find a way to hurt you if he wanted to."

"As could I."

"But you wouldn't."

"Neither would he."

"No, Damen," Nikandros took a breath.  "No one who knows what happened at the Kingsmeet, or at the trial, can doubt the depth of his love for you.  I am not questioning that.  But even the greatest of lovers sometimes fight, and while there are lines that you would not cross, he is not a man who restrains himself in anger.  What will he be capable of, when the only one who can hold him back is the target of his ire?  Having failed to protect you the first time, will I have to stand there and watch while he does you further damage?"

"I am not some delicate flower that needs to be shielded from the storm."

"Nor are you as impervious to harm as you think you are."  His eyes drifted to the part of Damen's chiton that concealed his wound.  "I would trust your faith in him better if you remembered that."

* * *

"How did you find your first day in the ring?" asked Laurent, tossing a sheaf of papers onto a table as he walked into the room.

"Short," said Damen, but his eyes were lit with an intensity they'd been missing for the past few days.  Laurent felt a smile that he did not show as he dropped into a chair beside Damen's bed and extended his arm imperiously so that his wrist was within reach.  Obediently, Damen reached forward and began to undo the laces on his sleeve.  Laurent was careful to hold his arm out far enough that Damen could do so without having to reach.  It had been one of the things that had helped restore normalcy, once Damen was out of danger - that Laurent would not be playing games if were hurt that badly, and today Laurent even felt comfortable enough to slide over to the edge of the bed and show Damen the laces on his back, even though he'd have to sit up to get to them.  Damen was leaning a little closer than was strictly necessary, and Laurent could feel his breath on his neck.

"Not now," Laurent said, "You've exerted yourself enough today."  Damen pressed a kiss to the back of his neck as the lacing slipped free of the last eyelet, but made no move to stall him as he shrugged off his jacket and moved back to the chair.

"We could find a way that doesn't require much exertion," Damen said warmly, as Laurent dealt with his own boots.  He had retreated back into his Veretian clothes after his first experience with Akielon sunburn, but they were hot and uncomfortable enough in this climate to make him dispense with them as soon as he could.  He would have to talk to Charls about creating some sort of hybrid, something that covered the skin and protected from the sun but was stll loose and airy in the manner of Akielon garments, not tight and heavy and dark.  Sitting here now, in front of Damen in his bare feet and shirtsleeves, was for him an intimacy greater than fucking - greater even than being unclothed at all, in a way that he didn't think Damen would ever truly understand.

"We could," Laurent agreed, "But we won't."

"What were you doing today, while I was exerting myself?"

"Spying on you and Nikandros."

Damen made a noise that was somewhere between amused and affronted.  "Don't trust me to follow the physicians orders?"

"Not at all, but that's why Nikandros was there.  No, I wished to know what he would say against me?"

"And?"

"And the task you set me would be easier if he took issue with my personality instead of what I've done to you."

"But you like a challenge."  Damen reached for his hand, tangling their fingers together.  "He is wrong about you.  You just have to let him see that."

"He was not wrong about me having done worse to you than what happened to your back."  He reclaimed his hand to rub it over Damen's shoulder, where with the tips of his fingers he could just feel the edges of the scars.  "I never apologized for that."

"You never apologized for any of it," Damen said, in that straightforward way he had that cut sharper than a sword.

"No," Laurent admitted.  There was a pause where a better man would have inserted his long overdue apology.  None came.  "I hope you know that it is not because I - feel nothing for what I have done," Laurent said slowly, "It's just that I can't find words that wouldn't sound - cheap."

 Damen reached for his hand again, and pulled it back down to his lap. 

"The man I thought you were then is not the man you are.  Getting to learn that, to see it every day, is a greater apology than I could ever need," said Damen, but Laurent was not sure that was true.  He too had gone through a time when he had made a separation in his mind between the man who killed his brother and the man who supported and protected him whenever he needed help or advice or a good strong shoulder, and had not been able to move freely in to his life and his love until he had found a way to make peace with their sameness.  The way Damianos said things like this, or spouted fantasies of better and purer ways that they might have met, or at times refused to speak of it at all, made Laurent think that he was still partly closing his eyes, and not entirely comfortable doing it.  But he could not force the issue.  He would have to wait until Damen brought it up himself, as perhaps he would when he was well and whole, in a place where he felt safe and comfortable enough to look what had been done to him in the face.  Laurent would have to be ready to do the right thing when the time came.

"You will win Nikandros over just as easily," Damen continued, but again, Laurent was not sure that that was true.  His usual methods of winning people over - be unapologetically unbearable, win every exchange, and demonstrate the benefits of having him on their side until they were forced to accept him on his terms for their own sake - showed no signs of working on Nikandros, and Laurent was beginning to suspect that in order to do what Damen asked, he was going to have to offer something real.  He objected to this on principal.  There was only one man who was allowed to see him vulnerable, and it was the one who lay on the bed before him.  Still, for Damen.

"As I am not going to be allowed to leave this bed again for the day," said Damen, "Do you think you might read to me to pass the time?"

"It is what I had planned from the start," said Laurent, retrieving the sheaf of papers he had dropped early, "Of course, it is only joint tax proposals that need your approval.  There are quite a lot of them."  And he smiled as Damen groaned.

* * *

The Prince of Vere caught Nikandros in a corridor by the throne room, when the prince was without his guards and the corridor was suspiciously deserted. 

"You allowed the King to stay in the ring with you yesterday longer than the physicians advised," he said.

Nikandros had been bracing himself for something unpleasant the moment he caught sight of him, but as openings went, this was not so bad.  He disliked the way Laurent had of judging his conduct, and far more the times when he acted like he had the right to control the King as if he were still his slave, but this kind of nagging was different.  He could imaging Hypermenestra chiding one of the friends of Theomedes thus for allowing the King to do something unwise, and he smiled.

"The King tells you too much," Nikandros said.

"He didn't tell me about it; I watched you." 

And like that, Nikandros's hackles were back up, and he prepared for this to be a fight the way all their encounters were.

"You didn't think that little scene between you happened other than by my design, did you?" the Prince asked, insouciantly

"My king did not set me up to be spied on by a foreign - prince."

"Confident of that?"

"Yes."

"Well, you are right.  He told you that speaking to you was my idea; I knew he would do it in the practice ring, so I positioned myself where I could observe you.  My Damianos is nothing if not predictable."

Nikandros felt his jaw clench tighter with every word.

"And now you have heard what was not for your ears."

"Yes."

"And?"  He waited to hear what the consequences would be of the words he had spoken in false confidence, of the few moments of openness he had had between himself and his friend.

 "And your king has absolute faith in me.  He knows me better than any other man, and he trusts with complete certainty that I am a better man than you implied."

"Yes, your highness."

"I, on the other hand, share many of your fears." 

Nikandros looked up sharply.

"I learned the ways of power at my uncle's knee."  His voice was thick with disgust. "He found me an apt pupil."

His first instinct was to see this as some kind of trap.  That by admitting his potential for treachery, Prince Laurent meant to provoke Nikandros into moving against him more openly, leading at the very least to his expulsion from the court, possibly to his arrest and trial for treason, even his execution ... but then he remembered again the man who had traded his life for Damen's at the Kingsmeet, and sat by his bedside, and Damen telling him that he had asked the Prince of Vere to mend things between them in the same way he had asked Nikandros.  His King had asked him to try; for that, he could try to accept this as real.

"It was your uncle who taught you how to treat your enemy, who was your slave," Nikandros said, carefully, trying to straddle the line between the respect he owed to a prince, however he thought of him, and how open he would need to be if this was going to work.

"My uncle showed me, by example, how to break a man.  I tried everything I could to break him."

"He is not broken."

"No.  He was too strong for that.  Stronger than I ever could have imagined."  His voice, when he said it, was of a man speaking of a lover.

"Before, you have spoken of the King's time in Vere as though you were ... proud, of what you have done to him."

"Yes, I have.  It makes people uncomfortable."  And the Prince of Vere enjoyed making people uncomfortable.  "That doesn't mean I -"

He paused, and suddenly Nikandros could see that this conversation was hard for him, even harder than it was for Nikandros to force his mind open long enough to hear him out.

"I cannot take back any of the things I learned from him.  There are some I would not even wish to; they are far too  _effective._ "  His mouth twisted.  "But I do not wish to be a man like he was, and that is what I feel like when I look back at what I've done."

"Are you telling me that you are sorry?"

"It's not you that I need to apologize to."

"No, it's not.  Have you apologized where it is needed?"

"That is not your business," the Prince said, and anger was creeping back into his voice, "But I would think my actions speak for themselves."

"Some of them do," Nikandros said.  Most of them, perhaps, though it pained him to admit it.  "But there are small ways in which you still treat him like he is your - plaything.  You have just admitted to manipulating and spying on him - even now you do not respect his privacy, or his right to choose whether or not he is involved in your schemes."

For a moment, Prince Laurent looked taken aback.  "I - did not consider it to be a violation. Privacy is not really a thing in Vere." 

Nikandros thought of what he knew of Veretians, from his time as Kyros of Delpha.  No, privacy was not a thing in Vere, and they played games with each other as though consent were not an issue either.  Perhaps Nikandros could not tell the difference between Laurent being untrustworthy and Laurent being Veretian.  Perhaps, with the countries joined, he would have to accept that there actually was a difference.

"But you share my worry for what you might do in the future."

"You have caught a glimpse of what I am capable of.  Damianos knows it better.  That his faith in me is absolute helps.  He makes me feel that I can be the man he thinks I am, that perhaps I already am, but ..." the Prince paused again.  "I resent you, for expecting so little of me.  That is probably not going to go away.  Still, it eases my mind sometimes to know that he has someone watching out for him who is not blind to what I might do in my worse moments."

Nikandros digested this.  He understood what it was like, to have Damianos look at you like you were better than you knew yourself to be, and how it made you strive to prove him right.  It pleased him, that Laurent wanted to be a better man for Damen as Damen had admitted to striving to be a better man for him.  But still - 

"I can understand a man like Kastor, who behaves rightly in small things to mask a deeper treachery.  I can understand men like some of those who followed him, who were good men in their daily lives but lacked the courage to stick to their honor when risk was great or temptation was high.  But a man who is sly and duplicitous in little matters but faithful unto death when the stakes are high is beyond my comprehension.  I cannot understand you."

"You are telling me that you cannot tell the difference between my petty nettling and signs of true betrayal."

Nikandros nodded.  The Prince looked almost amused.

"Ah well, if you cannot be my watchdog, than we are at an impasse."  He nodded, as if this were what he had expected all along.  "I will tell Damianos that we tried."

The Prince turned on his heel and began to stroll away, forgetting to wait for the bow as he often did.  Nikandros had an idea for how they could move forward, but he was going to hate it.  He screwed up his courage.

"You have seemed interested in the wrestling, when you've seen our tournaments," he called to the Prince's back, "If you'd like, I could ... teach you how."

Prince Laurent turned around and burst out laughing.  "Is sport your people's answer to everything?"

"The two best ways to come to know a man are to teach him something, or to learn from him."

Prince Laurent smirked.  "If this is a ploy to get me naked under you, you are going to be disappointed."  He looked as though he expected Nikandros to sputter and get embarrassed, but he was so far from the mark that it bothered him not at all.

"No, I want the excuse to rub your face into the dirt," Nikandros said easily, and had the pleasure of seeing the Prince of Vere surprised for the second time in the conversation. And then, "Someone ought to make you answer in some way for what you've done to him."

The corner of the Prince's mouth twitched, and he almost looked as though part of him conceded the point

"If I agree, you won't tell Damen," he said, because he would not be Prince Laurent if he were not being difficult.  Nikandros frowned, and opened his mouth to refuse.

"Not everything is part of a scheme," the Prince said, more softly, "Sometimes, I can just want to surprise him."

Keeping secrets from his friend, from his King, rankled.  Still, he had offered, and taking it back now at the first sign of difficulty, after Damen had asked him to put effort into making peace with his lover, rankled more.  Despite himself, he nodded.

"Good.  Have the training ground cleared tomorrow afternoon, at the time the King usually rests, and we will see what we can work through.  Tell no one, and this time, check the appropriate hiding places, hm?"

Prince Laurent spun away again before Nikandros could respond, and he was left with the feeling that he had either just done a very good thing for himself, his friend, and his country - or made a decision that he was going to come to bitterly regret.

Probably, it would prove to be both.  Veretians.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on the evening of the 27th to get it in on time for the prompt, but I wasn't really happy with it, so I went back and took another pass at the final scene. I think Laurent wasn't giving enough before, and I'm much happier with the way it flows. I really like the idea of Laurent and Nikandros bonding over their shared desire to protect Damen, at least a little bit from Laurent himself. This is under "Forgiveness" because it is the beginning of when Nikandros starts trying to forgive Laurent from the past, and as they gradually get to know each other through the wrestling lessons, I imagine that he manages to accept him fully and they eventually become besties as well.
> 
> Let me know what you think, and come say hi on tumblr at @covertius-fic if you want to chat!


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